It makes sense. Continuing in Tesla's footsteps was doomed to failure. You end up wasting 90% or more energy being transmitted. And it significantly raises noise floor for 'power'. This just seems like a bad ideal all around, so no surprise they're "pivoting".
A way this could have worked, is if it could tell where the charging devices were, and then beam-form in that direction. Then you'd be limited to by how many beams you could initiate.
Also you'd get energy beams being fired around your living space. Seems a bit iffy to me that you could do this without frying random things, biological and otherwise.
There actually is another company doing something similar to that called Wi-Charge, except they use an IR laser beam. It's still got quite a few fundamental physical limitations on safety and efficiency, but it's more practical than uBeam at least.
A way this could have worked, is if it could tell where the charging devices were, and then beam-form in that direction. Then you'd be limited to by how many beams you could initiate.